by Marika Ray
He was going to sell, that was for damn sure. I wasn't losing my inheritance over this pit.
4
Jax
I was zooming down PCH, trying to get to lifeguard headquarters before I was officially late. The weather was picture perfect for a day on the water, but I didn't even see it as I stewed over my morning interruption.
"My chi is blocked? What the hell?" I banged my hand on the steering wheel, trying to process the crazy conversation that just happened. I didn't know what the fuck chi was, but it didn't sound good to have it stagnant. My plumbing worked fine, thank you very much, lady.
She fit the picture of some business person stepping into an area she knew nothing about. Who wore heels on the docks? Or pretty much anywhere in HB outside of some fancy restaurant? And what kind of perfume was she wearing? She'd smelled like I'd stepped out of a day spa immediately into an old Woodstock concert. Not a bad scent at all, just made me think of hippies and flowers and bellbottoms.
Furthermore, who the hell did she think she was, assuming I would jump at the chance to sell The Shack? Like she was some fucking savior in a black suit and glasses, throwing money around at us little people.
And yet...there was something about her. I couldn't put my finger on it. Or more accurately, I wanted to put all my fingers on it. Everything about her was wrong and pissed me off, but something kept pulling me in, too.
She dressed like a corporate soldier, but she couldn't walk for shit in those heels, like she wasn't used to wearing them. And who brings up someone's chi in the same breath as they offer to buy your business?
I laughed out loud, letting the anger go and recognizing the craziness of the conversation. I didn't know if I'd see her again, but at least she gave me a few minutes of something totally different from my mundane work schedule.
Plus, behind that suit, she wasn't so bad to look at. Tall, blonde, put together nicely. When I'd grabbed her arms to keep her from falling on my property and suing me, she'd felt strong, like she had some muscle on her, which was an instant turn-on for me. I was a regular at my gym and I wasn't interested in a woman who didn't value her health like I did. This girl wasn't my type otherwise, but I could appreciate an attractive female just like the next guy.
The waves were wicked today, crashing hard and toppling quite a few surfers. I'd been busy zooming up and down the coast advising inexperienced surfers to try another day. Most took the advice and rode their boards in, but some persisted, which meant I was stuck out here keeping an eye on them from my rescue watercraft or jet ski to the non-lifeguards.
I was also looking out for other water vessels and marine life. We didn't get very many sharks in HB but they were dangerous enough we always checked the water surface. The helicopter would spot a shark before we ever would, but since I was the guy out in the damn water where the danger was, I was gonna keep checking in case the heli missed it.
It was nearing the end of my shift and the aggro surfers were few and far between now that the waves had calmed down a bit. I was north of the pier when I spotted a female paddling out on a huge board. I rolled my eyes and tracked her movement, knowing I had a kook on my hands. It took her forever to paddle out since she wasn't duck diving, so each wave that hit set her back several yards. That, and the fact that she had a wide ten foot board in this area, clued me in. Long boarders didn't frequent this spot. They tended to stay in the smaller waves that didn't require a lot of turning.
I had to hand it to her, she didn't give up. She finally made it out past the break and sat up on the end of her board. While she took a break, I scanned up and down the coastline, making sure I kept her in my peripheral vision.
Not even five minutes later, I saw her start paddling as a swell approached. I cringed and gave her my full attention, pulling up a little closer. The wave hit, the nose of her board went under, and she went flying into the water. She floated up and spit out water, hair obscuring her face. Before she could reel in her board, another wave hit and she went under and repeated the sputtering. This time, she hustled to get her board and hopped on, losing her suit bottoms in the process.
And hot damn, what a fine ass that was. I was momentarily distracted from my job, paying more attention to that strip of smooth, round, white skin than whether she was breathing okay after quite a tussle with the waves. She reached down with one hand and pulled the bottoms back up before paddling out further and sitting back up on her board.
I shook my head to clear that image, knowing it was burned into my brain anyhow. Firing up the jet ski, I pulled up close to her, the motor noise catching her attention.
"Hey!" I called out to her, then cut the engine and leaned as close as I dared.
"Hey," she called back.
I could see she was out of breath. When she swiveled her board around so she could see my face, I nearly fell off my jet ski.
Hippie girl.
The girl in the VW that cut me off the other day was right in front of me. It had to be her. I didn't think I'd ever see her again, and yet here she was, in the flesh, having just flashed me her gorgeous ass. My day was going from bizarre to fantastic.
"You cut me off the other day." I hadn't meant to say that out loud, but that's what came out as I tried to keep my eyes off her hardened nipples poking through the wet rash guard she wore. Hell, it may have been her nipples that I recognized, more than her face.
"I what--?" She scrunched up her face, looking adorably confused.
"On PCH a couple days ago, you were driving a VW Bug and you cut me off to get in a turn lane. Sound familiar?"
She threw back her head and laughed. "Yep, that was me. Sorry about that."
I just stared at her, taking in her laugh, her smile, the whole picture. Her long blonde hair was loose and wet hanging down her back in a tangled mess. No make-up to create a visual barrier to who she was. She'd just been tossed around in some waves, yet she already seemed over it and completely carefree.
"No wonder you weren't so happy to see me this morning." Hippie girl was still smiling at me, oblivious to my perusal of her body, practically naked except for a shirt that outlined her pert, little breasts and swim bottoms that had already shown me what was underneath.
My gaze flew back to her face as her words sunk in. "Wait, what?" Now I was the confused one. This morning?
"At the shop?" She prompted me, the smile fading off her face.
It took another few seconds of awkward silence before I figured out what she meant. The connection hit me like a thunderbolt.
"Holy shit, that was you this morning?" I sat back down on my jet ski, completely agape that these two women were one and the same. They were so different. Something didn't compute.
"When you left, I thought I'd rent a board from your shop and see for myself what the waves were like. Maybe get a sense of why the shop is so important to you. So, here I am." She spread her arms like this was the most natural place to find the annoying business woman from this morning.
I shook my head, putting aside my confused thoughts and finally remembering what the hell I was doing there on a jet ski. "You should take the board in. These waves are too big for a beginner. Did Jonny tell you to bring that board here?"
If my employee was renting longboards to beginners and telling them to surf here I was going to have a serious conversation with the kid. This was no place for a beginner and if we didn't want to be sued, we shouldn't be giving out bad advice.
She frowned at my harsh tone. "No, he said to take it down to Blackie's, but I don't know where that is, so I stopped and parked when I saw surfers. Figured right by the pier would be fairly safe."
I frowned at her, a little pissed off that she didn't think to ask around. The ocean wasn't a safe place for beginners if they didn't have someone with them to show them what to look for. Her type of naivety kept me in a job, but I couldn't even think about what may have happened had she gone out by herself in a less populated area where the lifeguards didn't cover as much.
&nbs
p; "Well, you figured wrong. Waves in this area are almost always four foot and today they happen to be heavy. Why don't you lay on the board and I'll tow you in?" I reached around to grab my equipment.
Her voice floated over the water, scraping my nerves. "You are not going to tow me, Mr. Big Bad Lifeguard! I'll just boogey board it in, thank you very much."
I spun around and found her arms crossed over her chest, not intimidating by any means, only drawing my attention back to her headlights. I needed to haul her in safely and get away from this chick. She was checking off all the boxes on my list of the perfect woman, at least physically, but everything that came out of her mouth was maddening.
Her attitude was starting to make everything click. The business woman from this morning was highly irritating too, so I was starting to see how these two personalities could actually be one single bundle of beauty and irritation.
"Fine. Do whatever the hell you want. I'm headed in anyway as my shift's almost up. Meet you on the sand." With that parting shot, I cranked over the engine and looped around to head on in. I wanted to gun it and leave her in my wake, but the professional in me knew that wasn't the right thing to do. I needed to make sure she got in safely.
I kept my speed slower than usual, glancing behind me frequently to check on her progress. She'd made it about halfway when a wave knocked her off the board again. I waited, counting the seconds before her head bobbed back to the surface and I knew she recovered.
My replacement met me at the water's edge with the truck. He'd unloaded his rescue watercraft already, which meant I needed to hurry up and get mine loaded and back to headquarters. I'd have to wash it down, fill it up with gas, fill out some paperwork from the day's activities, and then hit the showers.
I kept an eye on hippie girl, seeing that she'd made it to shallow water. I'd loaded up my jet ski and paused by the truck door to watch her drag her board up onto the sand. She looked exhausted, but determined. When she plunked down on the board and had a seat, I figured I'd better go over there and make sure she was okay.
For professional reasons only.
5
Sage
I couldn't really feel my feet right about then, which was the least of my concerns at the moment, if you could believe that. I'd finally spit out all the water that was trying to drown my lungs while still maintaining control of my surf board. Okay, saying I had control of it was a little much. It was more like the thing was a floatation device and my ankle was attached to it and somehow both myself and the board had made it to shore at about the same time.
After I'd dragged that thing to dry land, I sat down to catch my breath and assess my body parts. That's when I realized my feet were tingly. Maybe I'd gotten tossed so many times out there, my tingle-meter had moved from my nose to my feet!
I chuckled out loud at my own joke. I got giggly in life threatening situations, what could I say?
The warm sun suddenly went away, causing me to lift my head and see what happened. In all his lifeguard glory stood my nemesis, blocking all warmth and brightness with his very presence.
"You all right?" His calm voice held an edge of sarcasm. I'm sure he could have towed me in far more efficiently and with less side effects to my lungs and feet, but I couldn't let yet another man tell me what to do. Been there, done that, trying to escape it.
I pushed my hair out of my eyes and let a smile light up my face. "I'm glorious. You?"
He let out a quick chuckle before sucking it back in and remembering he hated me. "How about I help you get that board back on your car and I meet you back at The Shack?"
I debated the merits of that suggestion. My first inclination was to tell him to go to hell, but then my arms remembered the weight of that board and I reconsidered my answer. It was a very kind offer, after all.
I tipped my head. "Thank you for offering. I'll take you up on that." Jumping to my feet, I wiped the sand off my butt and tried to get the leash off my ankle. My feet weren't quite back to normal though and I almost went down.
"You got a problem with your legs?" He was looking at me with one eyebrow up, probably remembering the frequency with which I weebled and wobbled around him.
My face flushed, realizing I looked like an idiot, nearly falling three times in one day. "New feet," I deadpanned.
Which earned me another chuckle before he wrangled his face back into a frown. That was exactly the reason his chi was blocked, but I figured I wouldn't bring that up again. He crouched down and grabbed the leash around my ankle. Before he ripped the velcro away, his skin brushed against mine, just for a quick second, but long enough to send more heat to my face.
This guy's touch was doing all sorts of weird things to my insides and I didn't even particularly like him.
He stood back up and wrapped the leash around the end of my board before picking it up and carrying it over his head to the red truck parked just up the sand. I followed behind, not even bothering to drag my eyes away from the muscles in his arms holding up the board, or the way his back tapered down into a trim waist before rounding back out in the shape of two muscular globes in his board shorts.
Under different circumstances, I would have been highly attracted to this man. Too bad I needed to engage in the most important business deal of my life with him. I couldn't keep acting like a bumbling school girl. I needed him to take my offer seriously. My entire future depended on it.
"You comin'?" he asked, breaking into my thoughts. He'd loaded my board onto the back of his truck and was standing by the cab of the truck, tilting his head toward the passenger door where I stood still like a statue.
I grinned and jumped to open the door before sliding in. We were out of the ocean and back on dry land. Time to take back the upper hand here.
He climbed in behind the wheel and the cab suddenly seemed a thousand times smaller. A pair of sky blue eyes looked at me expectantly. At this proximity, I could see scruff on his face that hadn't been there this morning. I had an insane urge to reach up and drag my hand along his jaw line, feeling the scratch of his beard with my fingertips.
"Where to?"
I pulled my gaze away and looked to the parking lot. Maybe not looking at him would help my train of thought. "My Bug is on the street. Metered parking."
In answer, the truck rolled over the mounds of sand, the speed nice and slow to prevent hitting any beach-goers.
"I'll pull up as close as I can. Then we'll walk the board to your car." His voice sounded louder and deeper in the confined space, doing more to cause my shivers than the wet hair and swimsuit clinging to my body.
The rest of the ride was filled with comfortable silence, broken up by the dispatcher on the radio calling out codes and things that made no sense to my ears.
"Have you worked as a lifeguard for awhile?" Might as well get some intel directly from the seller of the property I would soon own. The internet search in my hotel room earlier that day had only told me his name, Jax Stern. His father, Max, had owned The Surf Shack before him. As far as I could see, it was a fairly average rental shop in a beach town. His father didn't have any social media accounts that I could find and Jax only had one, which was private.
"Since high school when I was assigned a tower pretty far north in a quieter area. Over the years, I've completed training to get out on the rescue watercrafts, which I like better than sitting in a tower or breaking up drunken fights on the beach." Jax smiled while he talked about his lifeguarding, cluing me in that he enjoyed what he did.
Jax parked the truck right next to the cement strand running along the shoreline. I followed his lead and exited the truck, coming around the back to get the surf board.
"I got it." I tried to get the board out of Jax's grip but he jerked it back and hefted it over his head before I could put in a good fight. I didn't like men doing things that I could do myself, thank you very much. "Hey!"
He started walking off in the direction of the street, looking behind his shoulder at me with the most annoying s
mirk on his face. "You forget, this is actually my board and I don't want you to drop it trying to drag it out to your car."
I hustled after him and defended myself. "I wouldn't drop it! I got it out to the beach just fine." Ha! Had him there.
He just laughed and kept walking. "That was before you wiped out, repeatedly, in my ocean. It's okay to admit you have noodle arms."
"If I had noodle arms, I'd admit it, but I'm just fine." I finally caught up to him, just as we reached my Bug. I could have made further comment about his supposed ownership of the whole damn ocean, but I kept it to myself. One argument at a time.
Jax lowered the board to his side and heaved it into my startled hands. "Okay, you load it up then."
Of course, I wasn't expecting him to do that, so I almost dropped the board, but not because I had noodle arms. Before it hit the ground, along with my shattered pride, I managed to heft the board up. Jamming the edge of the board on my hip, I shuffled the remaining two feet to my car and wrestled the thing up high enough to rest on the side of the rack on the roof of my car. Thank God I rented a VW Bug, not a big, tall SUV.
"Give me that." Jax intervened and lifted the whole board onto the rack, placing it perfectly in the center with ease.
I glared at him, even though I was quite happy to not deal with that board any longer than I had to.
"Okay, I got it from here. Thank you." I nodded my head at him and proceeded to pull out the flat ropes I would snake through my car windows and loop around the board to keep it in place while I drove it back to the rental shop.
Another swallowed chuckle sounded from behind me, but when I spun around, Jax was looking at my car with no expression whatsoever.